Get Your Emails in the Primary Inbox with Alyssa Dulin of Kit

Allea Grummert (00:01)
Guys, my gosh, finally the day is here. I convinced my friend Alyssa Dulin to come onto the podcast. Alyssa works for Kit and she is Kit’s director of customer success, which I’m just gonna fast forward and tell you that kit that Alyssa lives in Nashville with me. So we like get lunch and I get to ask her all these questions. I’m like, so your role is what now? And basically what happens is she just keeps on taking new roles. So she’s like the director of lots of things.

and where she originally started out a kit, at least when I met her, was in the deliverability department. That’s still that’s where your heart your blood pumps through.

Alyssa Dulin (00:37)
That’s right. yeah.

Yes, that’s always the love of my life. No, just kidding. my you

Allea Grummert (00:44)
Ha ha ha.

Alyssa Dulin (00:45)
know, deliverability is where it all started.

Allea Grummert (00:47)
Yeah. Well, more about Alyssa, because I have her bio in front of me, is that she loves helping creators reach the inbox of your subscribers, help you grow your audience and earn a living. She spends her time with her family, the actual loves of her life, her husband and two kettles.

Alyssa Dulin (01:02)
Yes.

Allea Grummert (01:04)
She loves being a mom and searching for the best coffee shop in Nashville. So I told Alyssa, yeah, this can be as coffee shoppy vibe as if we’re hanging out in person right now.

Alyssa Dulin (01:15)
Yes, I was telling you before we started that I am gonna feel like we’re just sitting at the flower kitchen. That’s usually our go to spot. so it might be very casual and I hope that that’s okay because I feel like we’re just hanging out over coffee.

Allea Grummert (01:29)
Yes, so guys, dear listeners, welcome to the flower kitchen in Franklin with us

Alyssa Dulin (01:34)
my gosh.

Allea Grummert (01:35)
with our tiny tables in one outlet for all people who are there. So bring your computer charged. Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (01:39)
True. Fighting over tables. Yep.

Allea Grummert (01:43)
well, I’m excited for y’all to meet Alyssa because like I said, I’ve been friends with her for years now, probably like three and a half or something. Wow.

Alyssa Dulin (01:49)
At least

Allea Grummert (01:50)
Yeah. And she is a light in my life, both personally and professionally. And she is my go-to gal for deliverability. Like my my knowledge of like spam filters and all that jazz, gosh, it has its limits. And so I told Alyssa, this is my limit is meeting, getting to talk to you and ask all the questions.

Alyssa Dulin (02:09)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (02:12)
but before I dive in, can you share a little bit more about your role of customer success at Kit? So just kind of fill people in on that.

Alyssa Dulin (02:19)
Yes, I would love to. So essentially I now starting back in March of this year, I got promoted to director of customer success. And I kind of get to have a bird’s eye view on what is it like to be a customer at Kit and how can we make it truly the best? And if you know me, you know I’m a little obsessive over things like this. So I I think that’s why I am now in this role is because I kind of always have been that way. So even when

Allea Grummert (02:44)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (02:45)
this wasn’t my role at Kit, I was kind of always being like,

Hey, someone go look at this ticket. This person’s upset. Hey, I’m gonna jump into this ticket or I’m gonna get on a call with this customer. And I just I cannot sit still when it comes to like the customer experience at kit. And so luckily now that is that’s my job to kind of be obsessive over what’s it like when you sign up? do

Allea Grummert (03:08)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (03:08)
you get to talk to someone? Are you confused? Okay, what are you confused about? How can we make sure that doesn’t happen? so I touch onboarding, support.

Deliverability, still spend a lot of time there, obviously. and then creator growth, which I’m just continuing to scale and scale, which is essentially sort of like an account management side of the business where we actually help customers with the strategy, maybe building some things for you. How

Allea Grummert (03:35)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (03:36)
are you growing your list? How are you monetizing your list? Kind of just more above and beyond, almost like an in-house services. but really your big

Biggest cheerleaders who we have a lot of insights into what’s working with email. And so we want to be really helpful. That started out even before my time managing that team as like

Allea Grummert (03:55)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (03:56)
one percent of our customer base gets that because it is so high touch and there’s so much

Allea Grummert (04:01)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (04:01)
involved. And we can’t hire a team of thousands. Kit is bootstrapped. we don’t take outsider funding. So, but still as I’ve taken on kit, my big push has been like, how can we get this level of service to more and more and more.

So I

Allea Grummert (04:15)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (04:16)
don’t think it’s even been super widely shared yet. But as of now, if you have a pro plan at kit, you get what we’re calling growth concierge. so you could have a list of 10 people, a list of a hundred people, a list of a thousand people, whatever it is. But if you’re on the pro plan, you have access to strategy experts, deliverability experts. You get quarterly audits of your account, all sorts of

great add-ons that are included in your plan now. just because I wanted to make sure that as many people as possible can get that level of support.

Allea Grummert (04:52)
I love that. Is that I recently got an audit done from your team. Is that because I’m a pro subscriber now?

Alyssa Dulin (04:55)
Yes, that’s it. Correct.

Allea Grummert (04:59)
Y’all, it was sick. I

cat on my team, Blazzer, had like put this like, well, you know, just revisit this at the end of October. It was like on my Asana. I don’t know. I saw it and I was like, what is this? What is what is this? And it’s like all of these different things could be fixed or tweaked or changed. And this beautiful report. my gosh.

I didn’t know that that was like a perk. I just thought it was maybe a new feature for kit in general,

Alyssa Dulin (05:22)
It’s a new perk.

Allea Grummert (05:23)
but I know that I know it’s a perk. Okay. Cause I signed up for

Alyssa Dulin (05:26)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (05:27)
the Creator Pro Plan to use subscriber signals, which is also

Alyssa Dulin (05:30)
Right.

Allea Grummert (05:31)
really flipping cool. As much as like I was like, I don’t need to know that much about my people. Man, when you actually get to see more about your people

Alyssa Dulin (05:37)
Right.

Allea Grummert (05:37)
or it’s surfaced, like these are the folks on your list who might be a really good fit for your services. I was like, How have I never seen any of these names? And I

Alyssa Dulin (05:45)
It’s so

crazy. Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (05:46)
Actively looking at my email list and

people who click and all that. So that was super slick, Alyssa. Thank you.

Alyssa Dulin (05:53)
I’m so glad you liked it. That makes me happy. And of course, if

you have any feedback, you just let me know. But I’m glad that you got to experience that. Yay.

Allea Grummert (06:00)
I love it. On the on the

front edge of things. That’s fun. I’m not usually on the

Alyssa Dulin (06:04)
Yes.

Allea Grummert (06:04)
front edge of things. I work in email is what I tell people. They’re like, Have you gotten

Alyssa Dulin (06:07)
Ha ha ha.

Allea Grummert (06:09)
into SMS? And I was like, No Like, I not yet.

Alyssa Dulin (06:12)
I yes, I love

SMS personally, which is another hot take, but

Allea Grummert (06:16)
Well yes. I’d be curious to know about

how SMS works for food bloggers since that’s most of my audience. And I was chatting with a friend, and he was like giving some suggestions, but I was like, I don’t know. I kind of draw the line on like it would have to be part of a campaign or an event, is my thought that SMS would make sense. Because I don’t really want a daily email with a new recipe, you know.

Alyssa Dulin (06:39)
Yeah, what if it’s like and again, you know, I’m not the expert here at all. This is where your expertise takes over. And

Allea Grummert (06:44)
let’s chat.

Alyssa Dulin (06:46)
I’m just like, what about this? if there was a creator, a food creator who created like weekly meal plans, what about like a Sunday

Allea Grummert (06:52)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (06:53)
morning or Saturday morning text that’s like your weekly meal plans ready? Click here for the grocery list, click here for the schedule. And essentially, wouldn’t that be good? And cause I would use that.

Allea Grummert (06:58)
Gosh dang, that would be good That would be good.

Alyssa Dulin (07:03)
If I found a food creator that made food

that aligns with like what my family would eat, what my picky toddlers would eat. And they sent out a text every Saturday being like, okay, here’s what you get at the grocery store. Here’s what you’re gonna prep

Allea Grummert (07:13)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (07:13)
today. I would love it. It would feel like a little personal assistant but

Allea Grummert (07:17)
Okay, I love it. I love it a lot.

Alyssa Dulin (07:19)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (07:20)
And then I wonder how much of that could be built in with AI to like make modifications.

Alyssa Dulin (07:23)
Right.

Allea Grummert (07:24)
And like have it

Alyssa Dulin (07:25)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (07:25)
molded. I mean, I wonder if that could be a just a product in itself of like I have a client who has these custom itineraries that’s run by AI.

Alyssa Dulin (07:32)
Mm.

Allea Grummert (07:33)
Like he funneled all the information into it, but like people could say I want to do this event or this event or these types of restaurants in the city where he lives. And it just like whips up this itinerary. But yeah, if you could like text

Alyssa Dulin (07:44)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (07:44)
about that, like your itinerary is done. Let me know if you have any edits and it’s just all done over text. You’re watching my opinion change in real time.

Alyssa Dulin (07:47)
Right. Yes. I think SMS, yeah. I know.

I love it. SMS is great for any sort of like notification, kind of time sensitive, transactional sort of message. But I really think you can get strategic and make your what you’re doing as a business feel more that way. And actually then that a lot of times serves the customer better than just kind of a random email. It’s like, hey, hope you’re having a good week. Here’s what’s going on this week. But instead, if it’s more structured and feels like

You know, this weekly service, I think that could really work.

Allea Grummert (08:18)
Yeah. Yes. okay, well let’s talk deliverability real quick. Y’all I wanted

Alyssa Dulin (08:23)
Yes.

Allea Grummert (08:24)
to have a listen on the podcast forever now, but one of the things she told me this summer has just like solved a huge problem in my head because everyone’s always asking me, how do I stay out of the spam filter filter?

Fail folder? I made that word one. Filter and folder.

Alyssa Dulin (08:38)
Folder.

Allea Grummert (08:40)
this the spam folder. and she said the way to solve that is to get people to reply back to your emails. Now I’ve always known that replies are really helpful for deliverability. Just like I just know that as like a tactic, but I didn’t know that it was like the biggest driver for staying in the primary folder. Did I say that correctly, Alyssa? Correct me.

Alyssa Dulin (08:59)
Mm-hmm. I mean, generally,

yes. I’m gonna add a few caveats so that deliverability

Allea Grummert (09:05)
Please.

Alyssa Dulin (09:06)
people listening don’t have a heart attack because they love to do

Allea Grummert (09:08)
Sure.

Alyssa Dulin (09:10)
that. So I think probably what we were speaking about was like going from promotions to the inbox.

Allea Grummert (09:16)
yes.

Alyssa Dulin (09:17)
but replies can definitely help potentially with spam placement as well. Depends on the problem. So before we get into replies, just so everyone like has this background.

Allea Grummert (09:25)
Con love context. Give it to me.

Alyssa Dulin (09:28)
And there’s a lot with deliverability, which is why people like me have a job and like I’m here to help. But you don’t need to be an expert in all of this because it’s a lot. but there are so many different factors that will make it will determine whether you land in the inbox or the spam folder. And if one thing is wrong, for example, let’s say your authentication is failing, I won’t go too far down that rabbit hole because it gets very technical. If your authentication is failing,

No amount of replies is going to help you, is all I’m saying.

Allea Grummert (09:59)
Got it.

Alyssa Dulin (09:59)
It’s sort of like building a house in a foundation. Your authentication is a foundation. So like at kit, that means setting up your verified sending domain. And then your authentication is a check mark. Once that’s set up, you’re good. That foundation’s there. So as long as all the foundational things are there, you’re not sending spam, you’re not sending unsolicited emails, you have your authentication in place, like the structure’s there and working. And now we’re just kind of getting into more of like,

The art of marketing and making people open your emails and liking it and engaging. That’s where replies come in. And it’s because the decision about whether your email goes to the inbox or the spam folder, it is sort of like an algorithm. I know we all love to say email’s amazing because you can beat the algorithm. Like you don’t have to worry about algorithms. For the most part, that’s true. But there is engagement still matters. So there are negative signals and positive signals your subscribers are sending.

With how they’re engaging with your emails or how they don’t engage with your emails. And

Allea Grummert (10:56)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (10:57)
mailbox providers like Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, they’re using that as data to determine where your email belongs after all the other stuff is in place. So the reason I love replies is they are the most positive signal your subscribers can send to help boost your reputation, get your emails in the inbox. And the really big plus sign is it makes your emails look more transactional in nature.

Which makes them more likely to land in that primary tab versus promotions tab. Cause you could have really, really strong engagement and still land in promotions because Gmail thinks, well, this is a promotional email. You a lot of times it is a promotional email. but nobody replies to like emails from Target or emails from whoever. They reply to the more transactional emails from their boss, emails from, you know, their coworkers. So if Gmail is seeing, a lot of people reply to these emails, they’re probably not promotional. You’re gonna go.

to that primary tab more. So that’s why I am

Allea Grummert (11:53)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (11:54)
the number one fan of getting email replies. They’re great.

Allea Grummert (11:58)
I love it. Well, and yeah, you and I had talked about positive and negative signals, especially like you said that there’s a special window of time. As again, correct me, because this is falling on

Alyssa Dulin (12:09)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (12:10)
newbie ears. But just like this this as people are joining your list, if they’re not engaging with you in X number of days, it’s more likely that they’re just going to continue to send negative signals back and it’s better just to remove them. You wanna elaborate on that?

Alyssa Dulin (12:25)
Yes, 100%.

Yeah. And that window of time, I think what I’ve seen depends a lot on how frequently you send. So if you

Allea Grummert (12:32)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (12:33)
send daily, for example, and this someone you’re sending to is not opening and you have sent them 30 emails over 30 days and they’re not opening, at that point, you probably want to start thinking about either reengaging them or removing them, especially once you get to like the 60 or 90 day mark. The longer you keep emailing them without them engaging,

Is that negative signals getting stronger and stronger. And especially if

Allea Grummert (12:55)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (12:56)
you have a big group of those people, because what that’s telling Gmail, Microsoft, whoever, is that you’re not paying attention to that. You’re not adjusting based on what your subscribers are telling you and how they’re engaging with your emails. and Gmail and you know, all the receivers, they want to see that you are doing that. That if someone repeatedly does not engage with your emails over 90, 180 days, you’re adjusting, you’re

removing them or sometimes excluding them, that might be a hot take we can talk about with my own email list. I haven’t removed my cold subscribers. I have like a thousand of them. Every now and then I include them in my emails. Like once a month. It doesn’t do anything. But I don’t send them every email. I know.

Allea Grummert (13:38)
my gosh. I’m taking notes

over here. I’m like, we gotta talk about this and we gotta talk about this. Yeah. Well,

Alyssa Dulin (13:42)
Spilling the tea.

Allea Grummert (13:44)
I know that one of the strategies we worked up for one of the duet clients was that if people are engaging, you know, with the welcome sequence, for instance, so it’s like

five or six emails over seven or eight days that if they haven’t engaged with those, we just mark them as like a quiet subscriber. Like we kind of quiet

Alyssa Dulin (13:59)
Mm-hmm. Like it?

Allea Grummert (14:00)
the noise in their inbox. So we’re sending that we basically by default move them to a weekly email instead of like four emails a week. So we’re just like we’re giving them the opportunity to engage on that weekly basis versus

Alyssa Dulin (14:08)
Yeah. Love that. Yes.

Allea Grummert (14:12)
just like hitting up with everything.

Alyssa Dulin (14:14)
That’s the

most important part is being adaptive. I don’t think you have to have a hard rule where it’s like either send someone everything or nothing. I think you can have this sliding scale where it’s like, okay, let’s start with everything. How’s it going? Okay, they’re not engaging, not engaging. Let’s make it slower and then slower and then eventually if it’s still not happening,

Allea Grummert (14:33)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (14:33)
remove them.

Allea Grummert (14:35)
Yeah, ’cause you don’t want to go to like nothing because then you’re actually not giving them the chance to engage.

Alyssa Dulin (14:40)
And that’s what a lot of people do. I think a lot of times just because, you know, we’re busy, it’s hard to be thinking about this and having this kind of adaptive thing happening.

Allea Grummert (14:47)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (14:48)
And now I’m having, of course, feature ideas of kit for kit that I will pass along. But

Allea Grummert (14:51)
Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (14:55)
yeah, I think I mean that takes time and effort to do what you and I are talking about, but it is important. What I do that is actually it’s not a lot of time and effort. I just on my weekly broadcast, I send to my

I think I usually do three to five star subscribers. That’s a pro kit feature. You could also just exclude cold subscribers. and then every now and then, like once a month, every other month, I’ll be like, you know what? Let’s full send this one. Especially if it’s like something important, like a launch or you’re selling something. Like, let’s just see how it goes. These people haven’t heard of it.

Allea Grummert (15:27)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (15:28)
obviously there’s a limit to that. You don’t wanna do that if someone hasn’t opened an email in like maybe like six months a year. you wanna be

mindful about the list health. But in general, if there are people who opted in, they opened at some point, especially. I think it’s

Allea Grummert (15:42)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (15:42)
okay to be a little bit more lenient.

Allea Grummert (15:45)
I my brain is also thinking of strategies and for my clients ’cause

Alyssa Dulin (15:48)
I love it.

Allea Grummert (15:49)
’cause what we’ve done with that automation for this client was like to add a tag and then we only

Alyssa Dulin (15:53)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (15:54)
like that tag is excluded from most of the emails are only included on Sundays, for instance. Whereas this could be a strategy of like just excluding your cold subscribers from the segments that you send to on a regular basis and then choosing which email once or twice a month goes to the full list. A full

Alyssa Dulin (16:10)
Yep.

Allea Grummert (16:11)
send.

Alyssa Dulin (16:12)
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s that’s really good. And so I went gosh, years without sending to my list, which is really bad. really bad for deliverability. Don’t do that. And it basically tanked my domain reputation. I had to build it back. So my first send back, my open rates were I think like either high 20%, low thirty percent, which these days is not great. I’ve essentially gotten it up to 70% on those sins.

Allea Grummert (16:36)
my goodness.

Alyssa Dulin (16:38)
it was mainly from replies, which we can talk more about at some point, but and also excluding cold subscribers. But to me, actually in my brain, like seventy percent open rate’s awesome. That’s pretty high. That tells me like I am really segmenting my list and I don’t mind

Allea Grummert (16:52)
Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (16:53)
then to every now and then send to those colder subscribers and my open rate is still like fifty percent when I do that. So that’s telling me this isn’t hurting me really substantially to where I need to cut them from my list.

Allea Grummert (17:06)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (17:07)
If

when I sent to those cold subscribers my open rates were closer, like twenty percent or I saw a huge spike in spam complaints, another

Allea Grummert (17:13)
Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (17:14)
thing we could talk about, that would be a red flag that maybe it is time to clean that list up.

Allea Grummert (17:19)
Okay. Okay, so do you have parameters then on like good open rates? You tell me, master. I was like, let me update my files. Tell me what you what you say.

Alyssa Dulin (17:24)
yeah. Yeah. Well,

it’s so interesting because it’s changed so much since

Allea Grummert (17:34)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (17:36)
automatic opens have become more of a thing. So maybe that’s another caveat I’ll say first before anyone else has a heart attack. As we’re talking about open reads a lot, yes, they’re inaccurate. They are inaccurate. and we can talk about why they’re still

Helpful in terms of looking at trend lines. Did you see

Allea Grummert (17:52)
Right.

Alyssa Dulin (17:52)
a sharp decline? Did you see a sharp rise? Things like that. but with Apple’s new mail privacy protection feature, essentially, a lot of people who use Apple mail on their phone or on their MacBook or on their watch, their emails are automatically showing as opened, even before they’ve opened them. It’s a new Apple.

feature to try and protect their privacy, protect their data. So if Apple sees an email come through, it will load the tracking pixel instantly. And that person might go on and open their email. There’s no way to tell did they actually open it or was it Apple? That has made opens inflated across the industry. And that’s going to change my ranges. One quick note though that’s really cool that a lot of people don’t know is that if if Apple sends the message to the spam folder, they don’t automatically open it. So

If you’re having an inbox placement issue, you will still see quite a big drop in opens, even if it’s

Allea Grummert (18:46)
Okay.

Alyssa Dulin (18:47)
not from like the real human behavior. It’s basically Apple giving us a free gift and telling us, like, yep, high

Allea Grummert (18:52)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (18:53)
opens, we’re placing you in the inbox. really low opens, we’re placing you in the spam folder. And that’s helpful to know. So when it comes to ranges, right now I would say

Anything below thirty percent now is kind of on the low side. which when I first started ten years ago in deliribility, I would have been like thirty percent open rate, you’re amazing. But these days thirty and lower is kind of low. I would say thirty to forty. maybe thirty to forty-five is kind of average-ish. It really this all depends on industry and niche as well. So I’m really speaking to like the kinds of people who use kit for newsletters, creators, businesses.

And then forty five to fifty five or sixty, I would say, that’s good. That’s healthy, that’s high. And then anything like sixty plus, I would say, Whoa, you’re really cleaning your list. Like, and they’re very engaged. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (19:43)
Above that. Exceptional. Yeah. Okay.

That’s super, super helpful. I’ve typically said the same thing of like, because of the iOS changes and all that, just thinking like the difference between 28% and 33%, negligible. But like 33% and 50%, that’s the kind of jump. Those those are the bigger trends that we’re looking at when we measure open rate and see how they’re performing. So

Alyssa Dulin (20:10)
Yeah, exactly. So open rates can basically tell you the overall inbox placement you’re seeing for the most part. It’s not gonna tell you whether Jim on your list actually is the one opening or not, probably.

Allea Grummert (20:23)
speaking of computers clicking around in emails, can we talk about bot clicks, please?

Alyssa Dulin (20:27)
Mm-hmm. Yes,

and I might have good news for you unless you already know this.

Allea Grummert (20:33)
Share anyway. What is it?

Alyssa Dulin (20:34)
Well, did you know that kit

enabled bot click protection? Okay. I don’t know if we’re using it. So yeah.

Allea Grummert (20:38)
Yes I did. But explain that. How how that works.

Alyssa Dulin (20:44)
essentially in your settings now in your kit account, you can turn on bot click protection. You can also click turn on bot open protection. I say do not do that. That is my biggest recommendation, don’t do that. Which

Allea Grummert (20:55)
good to know.

Alyssa Dulin (20:56)
I’ll I’ll talk about. The clicks, I’m probably not supposed to give away all the secret sauce, obviously, about how it works.

But essentially we have lots of tooling in place to determine is this likely a a bot click or a human click. It did lots of testing to make sure it’s accurate. and we’ve seen that be really helpful. Once you have that toggled on, it essentially just won’t. If a click happens and we’re sure, pretty sure it’s a bot, it will just be dropped. So sadly there isn’t like a here’s your overall click rate, here’s your human click rate. It’s just

Allea Grummert (21:27)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (21:28)
the new click rates from this point forward are with bots excluded.

Allea Grummert (21:32)
Okay, very cool. Love that. I appreciate that y’all are out there testing all of this. So that we don’t have

Alyssa Dulin (21:38)
Yes, yes. And then

Allea Grummert (21:39)
to.

Alyssa Dulin (21:40)
exactly. With opens, the reason I say don’t turn it on is because of what we just talked about. with the male privacy protection thing, it actually it removes a bunch of opens from your stats. But then if that person does go back and open, which many of them do, it doesn’t show up as an open because we’ve already

Allea Grummert (21:58)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (21:58)
counted that as a bot. So that’s why I say don’t turn it on because it actually makes it harder to see

your overall open rate trends and whether you’re

Allea Grummert (22:07)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (22:07)
having deliverability issues.

Allea Grummert (22:08)
Yeah, and to diagnose potentially

Alyssa Dulin (22:10)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (22:11)
what’s going on. So that brings up yes, were you gonna say something else? Okay. I heard this. Okay, like go into it. I will I will listen. yes, breathe your coffee, breathe the red in.

Alyssa Dulin (22:15)
No. You’re good. I’m just breathing.

Allea Grummert (22:23)
okay, so this brings up a couple things of getting it getting out of spam.

Alyssa Dulin (22:29)
Mm.

Allea Grummert (22:29)
What’s the strategy for that? Because maybe we can talk about replies too. And I want to introduce everyone to your tool. I’ve mentioned it once before on the podcast. but Alyssa is the creator of Send Gage. This face right here, this brilliant creature that I can see on my computer, like she came up with Send Gage, which

Alyssa Dulin (22:46)
You’re so sweet.

Allea Grummert (22:47)
I’ve briefly mentioned before, but I want you to be able to introduce that. Is I’m also curious about like when we start doing these strategies to help improve engagement, how do we actually see the progress that it’s working?

Alyssa Dulin (23:00)
Right. Yeah, great questions. I can jump into spam filtering.

Allea Grummert (23:00)
Or do we just trust the process? Like, yeah. I’ll leave the The floor is yours. Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (23:10)
so again, the most important thing is make sure your bones are good, which that gets into the really technical part of email that I think scares a lot of people. The good news is you don’t have to be an expert, you don’t have to understand all it, but you do need to make sure your authentication is passing.

If you use kit, it just means you have a verified sending domain in place. You’re sending from your domain that you own and all that good stuff. correct. That will bounce. 100%

Allea Grummert (23:36)
So like not at gmail dot com. Okay. Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (23:41)
bounce. so that’s a I mean, I see that happen all the time. Sending from Gmail or Yahoo or something, those emails will bounce because they have strict policies in place that don’t allow you to send emails from their domain outside of their IP addresses. so

Make sure your DNS is in place. I know Allie can help with that. I can help with that if anyone

Allea Grummert (24:00)
Ha ha.

Alyssa Dulin (24:01)
needs it. I personally like to send myself test emails out of my own kit account or whatever you’re using. And you can pull the message headers. I don’t know if anyone does that or if that’s super nerdy, but it’s really easy to do. You just open your email, like in Gmail, and click the three dots next to the reply button and click show original. Gmail’s really nice and will right there at the top tell you SPF pass, DKIM.

Pass, D mark, pass. That’s all you need to see. You need to see those three passing. You’re good. If anything says fail, that’s when you want to reach out to Kit or whoever you use and ask for help. but you just want to see that all those three things are passing nicely. And that means authentication’s good. On to the next step. the next most common reason I see people’s emails go to spam is they’ve had high amounts of complaints. High complaint rate.

Allea Grummert (24:53)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (24:54)
this is.

a fun topic to get into. So the best place to go to understand your complaint rate is actually Google Postmaster Tools. Do you use that, Allie? It’s great. It’s

Allea Grummert (25:05)
Yes, I do. And it’s free, it’s just included.

Alyssa Dulin (25:07)
free. It’s free. It’s awesome. You just have to set up one TXT record. I know some people really hate doing DNS stuff, but it’s really not too hard. you go to postmaster.google.com and this is essentially Gmail’s kind of like a sender dashboard where you can see

How are your emails performing specifically with Gmail? But Gmail owns most of the market these days. So really Gmail, I would say, is the number one place you should focus if you’re worried about spam filtering and open rates and all that good stuff. And it’s also a good proxy. If a lot of people are marking your messages as spam who use Gmail, there’s probably people marking your messages as spam

Allea Grummert (25:44)
Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (25:45)
who use other tools as well. So if you get in there, they will tell you.

what your complaint rate is at Gmail. And they also tell you what their thresholds are for what’s good and what’s bad. So it’s really easy to see. If you’ve exceeded 0.1%, they’re like, ooh, warning, that’s not great. If you exceed 0.3%, again, this will all be on the dashboard, don’t to memorize it. That’s like warning bells, you’re probably gonna start to see some emails go to spam. And if it’s way above that limit, then you’re really gonna see your emails go to spam. So that is the biggest thing I see happen. And I ask people, go investigate like

What happened on that day? Are you seeing bots come in your list and they’re marking emails a spam?

Allea Grummert (26:22)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (26:24)
Did you send to a list you haven’t emailed in years? And they look that’s what I did. And they’re like, who are

Allea Grummert (26:28)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (26:28)
you? so you kind of have to get to the bottom of it, the root cause, and then go clean that up and rebuild reputation. So fun.

Allea Grummert (26:37)
Okay.

any other thoughts on that? Otherwise like I wanna go into how you actually build your reputation.

Alyssa Dulin (26:45)
Yeah.

Yeah. We can get into that. One thing you mentioned I don’t want to not touch on. You were like, How do I know it’s working?

Allea Grummert (26:52)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (26:53)
One bummer about Google Postmaster Tools, they used to have my favorite thing in the world. It was called domain reputation. And you could see if your domain reputation was bad, low, medium, or high at Gmail. And they put it

Allea Grummert (27:05)
That would be nice.

Alyssa Dulin (27:06)
on this nice graph and you could see it getting better over time. So me and my team at Kit, that was our favorite thing. We would work with a customer.

Who had a bad reputation and it would just go do up on this beautiful chart and we could send it to the customer and be like, Look what you’ve done, this is amazing. They took that away, sadly. It’s such a bummer. I don’t know. But I

Allea Grummert (27:25)
Why?

Alyssa Dulin (27:27)
don’t know. I’m I don’t fully get it. They’re like, We’re gonna come out with better information. They do have a thing now they didn’t used to have where it’ll straight up tell you in text like what you need to work on. So for me, when my

Allea Grummert (27:38)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (27:39)
reputation went down the drain, it said you’re not sending frequently enough, which I already knew.

But for someone who doesn’t in deliverability all the time, that would have been nice to see. So they will tell you. They’ll say, you’re getting too many complaints or people love your emails. Good job. So I think they wanted to replace it with more of like text based, we’re gonna tell you exactly what you need to fix. But I

Allea Grummert (27:57)
It helpful. Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (27:59)
miss seeing that improvement. So what I will say, if you since you don’t have that anymore and you’re wanting to see like, is my hard work doing anything? honestly, watching opens increase, I think is probably the

most meaningful metric you can move. And that’s what I have seen work on my own list as I repaired my reputation. Again, my opens just kept kind of slowly climbing from like high 30s to low 70%. And that was from the combination of really ramping up replies and removing more unengaged subscribers.

Allea Grummert (28:32)
Okay. ‘Cause I know the other reason why we’ve always said to like keep a clean list, like f like getting rid of cold subscribers entirely, was well a few reasons, like to improve and have more accurate data. But I love that you’ve said that like we could still keep them and have accurate data for your usual. the other just being the cost of an ESP when

Alyssa Dulin (28:52)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (28:53)
you have cold subscribers. But you’re not saying to not get rid of them ever. You’re just saying like give a window.

Alyssa Dulin (29:01)
Yeah. And it probably depends on like your list size and all that. My list is

Allea Grummert (29:04)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (29:05)
like three thousand all in. And so for me, for a thousand people who I didn’t email for years to be unengaged, I’m kind of I still feel like I have this window of time where I can kind of win them back, remember who I am. I know I

Allea Grummert (29:16)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (29:17)
took years off. I’m sorry I had a baby and I’m busy. But

Allea Grummert (29:19)
Ha ha ha.

Alyssa Dulin (29:21)
and not everyone’s in that same situation, I’m sure. but and I obviously I don’t have to worry as much about the cost of kit because I work there. So

I like I get all the things. I will also say with subscriber signals now being a feature, it gives you more of a reason not to unsubscribe people because now it’s like, well, I have all this enriched data on them. I can go reach out to them in other ways. so I

Allea Grummert (29:43)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (29:44)
think it’s unique for everyone. I get, you know, if money’s tight and you need to find ways to do it and you want to remove some subscribers, but I would say if that’s not your big driver, I wouldn’t just go and cut a bunch of people without first

Allea Grummert (29:56)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (29:57)
changing the cadence.

Allea Grummert (29:58)
Yes. And so the way that I have it set up for our cold subscriber reengagement situation for our clients is that we wait like sixty to ninety days and ask like did they open an email? If not, send them this reengagement series and try and get them to re-engage. So even the idea of like sending fewer emails maybe after the first 30-day mark and then for like another

Alyssa Dulin (30:19)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (30:19)
sixty days on top of that, at like them getting fewer emails, but hopefully they engage, that that could be part of that strategy. But then after ninety days, if they still don’t

click and engage then we can get rid of them. Does that feel too conservative for like the

Alyssa Dulin (30:32)
What was the last number you said? The last threshold?

Allea Grummert (30:35)
so total of ninety days. So like thirty days really? You and Preston need to talk. He’s like, why not?

Alyssa Dulin (30:37)
I think I would bump it to 180 personally. But you can. I know. We do.

Allea Grummert (30:46)
Why keep No, I’m just I’m teasing, but

Alyssa Dulin (30:48)
Yeah.

I think it also depends on your open rates. I just see too many people who

Allea Grummert (30:51)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (30:53)
have like 60% open rates and they’re like, I’m gonna delete all these people. I’m like, you’re doing great. Like it’s not hurting you.

Allea Grummert (30:58)
Mm.

Alyssa Dulin (30:59)
I think it’s all about understanding risk and obviously doing what’s best for subscribers too. Some of those people might have open tracking turned off. That’s also an issue we didn’t talk about.

Allea Grummert (31:09)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (31:10)
so I would say if you’re having deliverability problems or low open rates or high complaint rates.

Be a little more on the conservative side, closer to

Allea Grummert (31:19)
Okay.

Alyssa Dulin (31:19)
the 60 to 90 days. If you have healthy open rates, people are receiving your emails, low complaint rates, I think don’t be in a rush to get rid of people. I would extend all the way out to that 180 days personally. And that’s again why I’m doing it on my list, because it is relatively healthy. It’s not hurting me when I email these people. And the good thing about the cadence of it all is those signals we talked about. So if once a week I’m sending really great signals to Gmail.

High opens. Hi replies. That’s awesome. I have more of an ability to every now and then send an email that doesn’t have as healthy of engagement, but I’ve built up my reputation so that it works. It’s okay.

Allea Grummert (31:57)
It can withstand that. Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (31:58)
Yeah. This is different for everyone. Deliverability is very unique. so it really depends

Allea Grummert (32:03)
It is, yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (32:04)
on the health of your list. Like, did people sign up to be there? Do they want to be there? All that good stuff. I would give totally different advice to someone.

Who was starting out with a more unhealthy list? Maybe they got from giveaways or the people, you know, aren’t fully opt in, which I don’t even I’ve never worked at a place that allows non opt in email. So just giving a caveat that it’s it all depends. Yeah.

Allea Grummert (32:26)
It is yes, it really does.

Real technical question. Technical, technical. Also I wanted over here when just saying bad reputation earlier, so just I kept that inside. Kept it inside.

Alyssa Dulin (32:34)
I know, I it.

Allea Grummert (32:39)
Was that Lady Gaga? That’s Lady No, that’s Taylor Swift. Bad reputation. Bad reputation. big. And I’m a swi and I

Alyssa Dulin (32:43)
Taylor Swift has big, big reputation. But I like it. I mean, either way is good. We want everyone

to have a big reputation. Yeah.

Allea Grummert (32:51)
Big reputation. I say that as somebody who’s a Swifty. Wow. That’s embarrassing. Erases from your memory, everyone.

but just a technical question about like so like 180 days. Would you look at, you know, say we wait 180 and then ask, did they engage in the last 90? Is that what we’re looking at? Or are we really like, if they haven’t engaged in six months? I’m thinking bigger list, slower cleanup. What’s the

Alyssa Dulin (33:15)
Hmm

I would say

Allea Grummert (33:17)
‘Cause I feel like the

likelihood of a ho clicking once in a hundred and sixty days is fairly high, but does that engage in enough to keep them around? You would say yes, probably.

Alyssa Dulin (33:24)
Yeah.

I’m just gonna like make a hypothetical suggestion. You know, it doesn’t fit everyone,

Allea Grummert (33:33)
Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (33:34)
but I would say it would be like, okay, 30 days of no engagement, go from if you’re sending more than once a week, go from that to weekly emails. If they don’t open for 30 more days, go to monthly emails. And then send monthly emails.

For like, I mean, that’s only three or four if you’re still sending to them over like

Allea Grummert (33:54)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (33:54)
three to four months, that’s only sending them three or four emails. That’s really not a huge deal. so I would say then keep them on another additional like three, four ish months, five months. And

Allea Grummert (34:04)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (34:04)
then if they’re still not engaging, you might want to send an email that’s like, ’cause people have open tracking turned off. hey, click

Allea Grummert (34:12)
Hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (34:12)
this button if you still want to receive my emails. Sometimes we see customers

Get emails from their subscribers that’s like, what? I open all your emails. Please don’t remove me. And they

Allea Grummert (34:21)
I know. Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (34:22)
just don’t realize. so I would say, again, this is all assuming your deliverability is great, open rates are great, you’re not in trouble here. Like this is kind of the the policy I would follow. So then again, after that additional three to four months, send them that email. They can click or reply to stay on your list. And then if they don’t engage with that, then you can remove them.

Allea Grummert (34:42)
Then you know. Yes. Then the relationship has been defined. You just know.

Alyssa Dulin (34:47)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (34:50)
well, with our remaining time, I do want to talk about send gauge. Which y’all I’m saying send, like ship it, and gauge, like a measurement. Send gauge. One word.

Alyssa Dulin (35:02)
Yes.

Allea Grummert (35:02)
Alyssa created this. Tell about it, friend. What’d you make?

Alyssa Dulin (35:06)
goodness. Well, I’ll start with what it is today and then maybe a little backstory. But essentially the version of it today is reply automation. think of it kind of like mini chat for email. But essentially I’ve been using it on my own list. Allie’s been using it, other people have used it to say, if you want to receive my latest podcast episode, for example, click or reply podcast and I’ll send it right over. Or I have done it for like a wait list. If you want to join the wait list, just click

Allea Grummert (35:35)
A service.

Alyssa Dulin (35:35)
reply to this email wait list and I’ll add you to it. You can do it all sorts of ways. But this was a tactic I used when trying to rebuild my own reputation. And I have received so many replies since then. It has really boosted my reputation and my open rates. And the reason I built this, first with Syn Gauge, I started with I want to build the deliverability tool I’ve always wanted. There are lots

Allea Grummert (35:58)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (35:59)
of tools out there for how’s my deliverability. And I hear people all the time come to me at Kit being like

I use this tool and it says I have, you know, horrible deliverability, or it says I’m on this block list and I have to be like, your open rates are 70%. All the tests are going to the inbox. This block list you’re talking about, literally no one looks at it. It’s not doing anything, but people freak out because these tools

Allea Grummert (36:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (36:24)
don’t have the nuance, or it doesn’t understand that you’re using kit to send email and it’s freaking out. It’s like,

Allea Grummert (36:29)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (36:29)
this email’s not authenticated, and it totally is. So

I just was like, I want to build a tool that’s smarter, that knows the context, that can actually tell you how things are going. But what I learned in that process, and it’s still all there, it’s in Syngauge, you can do the deliverability monitoring. But what I learned is there’s this like now what? It’s like, okay, I’m going to promotions tab, now what? And I can give people all the information in the world, but what people really need and want are tools that change and make things better. And so

Allea Grummert (36:58)
Hm.

Alyssa Dulin (36:59)
And I it was at Craft and Commerce, Melissa and I had a workshop about deliverability where I preached about replies and the room really perked up and everyone was like, Okay, I want to do this, but how do I get people to reply? Once they reply, what do I do? Some people tell

Allea Grummert (37:13)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (37:14)
me their life story. I’m flooded with replies. How do I manage this? And that’s when something clicked. I’m like, this is really what people need. They need more replies, but also they don’t know how to do it or how to manage it. And so what can I do to help?

And that’s when you know we’re all kind of now trained on the mini chat or DM automation strategy

Allea Grummert (37:32)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (37:32)
on Instagram where okay, I want something, I can DM it, it gets sent to me, and it works really well, especially for the Instagram algorithm. It’s telling Instagram, look how much engagement I’m getting. It does the same thing for email. So that’s why Singage exists. It also tags people who reply to your emails in kit with whatever you want to tag them with. I have them tagged for me as replied. So now in kit.

I can easily see who’s replying to my emails. If I wanted to like reach out to them specifically, I could. but it’s really great to have that new visibility, see how many replies I’m getting, and it automatically replies to those people for me, which is awesome.

Allea Grummert (38:08)
It’s super slick. Yeah, I did it for a

Alyssa Dulin (38:10)
Thanks.

Allea Grummert (38:11)
launch I did in September where I was going to announce a workshop like on a Tuesday, but the Thursday email before I said if you want to sneak peek, like for the people who read to the bottom of the email, if you want to sneak peek, just reply with this word and like so it was really cool, dear listener, is what happens is like Alyssa set up SendGage to work with your Gmail. So your Gmail sends an email to them, just threaded in the same conversation. So right, they get my email, they reply to it.

They immediately get a reply from my gmail saying, Ooh, look at you. Like you can insert your information. Click here, you know, to find out more. And it’s just super cool because it’s like they replied and I didn’t have to go send individual like links, which I had done before in a previous launch. So not only that, but it’s super kind of it’s not even gamified. You I’m like on Duolingo. It’s not that. But like to go

Alyssa Dulin (39:01)
Mm-hmm. No.

Allea Grummert (39:02)
see like how many people have replied, like there’s a

a chart in Send Gauge that shows you that. And you can set it up for like these specific emails. I’m really excited to rewrite my welcome sequence and build it in of like getting people

Alyssa Dulin (39:15)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (39:16)
to reply there because then I get their engagement as soon as possible and they get rewarded for it with some sort of freebie or insider look.

Alyssa Dulin (39:24)
Exactly. Yes. I love that you can just have it turned on and running in the background all the time. So it doesn’t have to be just a one-off broadcast. It can be a welcome automation. It’s always replying to people while you sleep or do whatever you’re doing. but it also has the ability to just reply, monitor replies without doing

Allea Grummert (39:40)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (39:40)
the auto reply thing. I have some users who just set that up because they just want to see like how many replies am I getting?

Allea Grummert (39:46)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (39:47)
so there’s lots of different ways to use it.

Allea Grummert (39:50)
Yeah. And it’s pretty easy to set it up. Do you wanna talk about the scary page?

Alyssa Dulin (39:55)
Yes.

Allea Grummert (39:57)
You wanna talk people through this? ‘Cause good Google’s like, Are you sure you want to give us access? So it looks like just just work through it. Just work through it. No way.

Alyssa Dulin (39:59)
my gosh. It’s so annoying. And I’m the problem here. Yeah. So

just to give you some insider scoop. when working with Gmail, obviously in order for this to work, it needs to have access to your Gmail account and it needs to be able to read emails and write emails. I have the code so that it’s only looking for emails that match the subject line you’ve inputted into SynGauge. And it’s looking for R E and then the subject line.

So if your subject line is Black Friday is almost here, it’s only looking in your inbox for R E Black Friday is almost here. Cause that was the original

Allea Grummert (40:35)
Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (40:36)
email you sent. So just so you know, it’s not like doing anything crazy. and then it’s going to automatically reply with whatever you told it to say. So because Gmail’s great and those are big permissions, they have to approve the app.

I’ve gone through most of the process. I still it’s this is me being a blocker. I still need to record a YouTube

Allea Grummert (40:55)
Ha ha ha.

Alyssa Dulin (40:56)
video for them where I walk through everything. And your girl is busy with the

Allea Grummert (41:00)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (41:00)
director job and two kids and all that. So if that scares you, don’t sign up for Syncage. But

Allea Grummert (41:03)
Doing this with us, yes.

Alyssa Dulin (41:08)
yeah, that’s basically if you just click yes, I agree, nothing scary is happening. but that is a Gmail warning until I record a YouTube video showing them how it works and they approve the app.

I’m also working with the kit team to figure out how we can get it more embedded into kit, make it easier to use, and then you don’t have to worry about any of that. So just a heads up.

Allea Grummert (41:27)
Just a heads up. And also just to like point this out, because you might be thinking, Well, if Alyssa’s working for Kit, why isn’t she just building it in? Y’all, that’s not even her job at Kit. She just does this like in her spare time while watching T V.

Alyssa Dulin (41:39)
I was literally building

this at eleven PM at night, like half asleep, and then getting up with the kids early in the morning and then on the weekends. And that’s why it basically yeah, I just had like don’t have time anymore to do it. but it like it’s working. I still use it as a as a user

Allea Grummert (41:54)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (41:55)
and I’ve tapped in an engineer at Kit to be like, Okay, how

Allea Grummert (41:59)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (41:59)
could this become something that Kit offers?

Allea Grummert (42:02)
Yeah, yeah, I mean you developed this proof of concept and you’re a freaking

Alyssa Dulin (42:05)
Right. Yes.

Allea Grummert (42:07)
BA woman because of it.

Alyssa Dulin (42:09)
Thanks. It’s honestly just been so fun to learn. I feel like I’ve learned so much about like building a SaaS company. Obviously I’ve worked at one for a long time, but being on this side of it where I would get feature requests and you know, taking those in and it’s just been really, really good. I think it’s made me better at my job at Kit because I just have a deeper understanding of like how all of product,

Allea Grummert (42:31)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Dulin (42:32)
marketing, how it all works together.

Allea Grummert (42:34)
Yeah. Well, Alyssa, being my friend, has created a special

Alyssa Dulin (42:38)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (42:39)
offer for listeners. Do you wanna share that with everyone? And just know I will link to Send Gage with our duet link in the show notes. You could go get that. But tell what it is.

Alyssa Dulin (42:49)
Yeah. so if you go to Send Gage through Ali’s link, everyone gets a seven day free trial. So you can go try it out for seven days. And then if you want to continue, you’ll have a ten dollar off code. So it will be nineteen dollars a month. and then of course, like if it changes in the future, if it becomes part of kit, who knows what it becomes, then it might be included in your kit account soon. And then you will not need that send gauge subscription anymore. But

As of now, as long as Syn Gauge is the way it is currently, you will always have that $10 off applied to your account.

Allea Grummert (43:23)
I love it. Yeah. Alyssa was like, do we even do we even share? And I was like, yes. Cause if we can be improving your deliverability in the meantime, like who

Alyssa Dulin (43:27)
Ha ha ha.

Allea Grummert (43:30)
knows how long engineering might take. And I’m super grateful to have it. I’m gonna build it into my welcome sequence strategy. And if it means later it ends up becoming free-ish or built into my paid plan with kit, all the better.

Alyssa Dulin (43:41)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (43:41)
So y’all go to duet.co slash c send gauge.

I will link to that in the show notes and you will get ten dollars off forever. And I’m so grateful that you finally get to meet Alyssa. She’s a sweet, sweet friend, as you can tell. SmartyPants. and I love being able to like tap in to what my friends know. And so thank you for sharing with us, Alyssa.

Alyssa Dulin (44:03)
Thank you for having me. I will literally come on any time you want. It’s so much fun. So please

Allea Grummert (44:07)
So

Alyssa Dulin (44:08)
just tell me when.

Allea Grummert (44:09)
yeah, so if you’re listening to this and you’re like, wait, wait, wait, Allie, you didn’t ask all of my questions, like send me an email, DM me, I will bring Alyssa back and maybe we’ll even do it in person sometime. So it would be so it’d be so much fun.

Alyssa Dulin (44:19)
That would be so much fun. If you haven’t

heard about Kit Studios, listener, it’s insane. So Ali, we need to go to a Kit Studios together. I was just at the New York one and you would have freaked out. It was insane. Yes.

Allea Grummert (44:26)
We do. It looks so nice. We can do that. So guys,

as a kit user, we get free access to kit studios, which are these like in person podcast studios, gathering spots. There’s one in Boise. Is it Chicago? New York City? Those three.

Alyssa Dulin (44:45)
Mm-hmm. New York. We don’t

have any more yet, but definitely always talking about where the next one’s gonna be. And I’m not kidding. Like, I’m not just saying this because I work at Kit. These podcast studios are insane. Like state of the art. When you sit down in that chair and you see yourself on the screen with the lighting and the mics, like you look like a million bucks. You look like you’re on the biggest podcast in the world or whatever, you know, video tutorial you want to record. You can record courses there, you can do all sorts of stuff.

And I just don’t think enough kit customers know that like you just have access to this. You can just tell your friends

Allea Grummert (45:19)
Yeah.

Alyssa Dulin (45:19)
and family, Hey, I have a podcast studio in New York. I’m gonna go fly out and use it real fast. And you just book an appointment and you’re there. And it’s so much fun. It’s really great.

Allea Grummert (45:28)
You know what?

I might have to add that to my travel reasons. Yes.

Alyssa Dulin (45:31)
Seriously. Melissa

and I have been talking about maybe going in December, so maybe we should coordinate it.

Allea Grummert (45:36)
I’m

already gonna be in New York in December. Cause I gotta go look at the Christmas lights. Yeah, we could. Guys, get us your deliverability questions by December. And I’ll have Alyssa back on. And you

Alyssa Dulin (45:39)
And we could do it in person. Okay, we’re gonna talk about this. Yes.

Allea Grummert (45:48)
can meet Melissa as well. So these podcast studios are super slick. And like I mentioned, they are free. You just like reserve a spot. Which is like one of the most generous things that Kit has ever done. Like they didn’t have to.

Alyssa Dulin (45:57)
It’s truly insane. And you might see a celeb while you’re in there. That’s all I’ll

say. It’s just like I was in there for two days and I saw some pretty cool people. No, like real people recording in the New York City

Allea Grummert (46:03)
Is it a cutout of Bieber? like a real person.

Alyssa Dulin (46:09)
podcast. So it’s a great spot.

Allea Grummert (46:10)
That’s so cool.

That’s so fun. Well, Alyssa, is there anywhere else you want people to connect with you or just send them to Send Gage?

Alyssa Dulin (46:20)
I would love some friends. Let’s connect. I’m trying to get better at being on threads. It’s kind of a fun new spot. So you can

Allea Grummert (46:25)
Love threads.

Alyssa Dulin (46:26)
find me there, Alyssa Doolin. I’m on Instagram. I really want to start posting on Instagram that’s not just no offense to like my kids. So feel free to follow me there and I’m really gonna start. I’m gonna try. I’m gonna try to do that. LinkedIn, obviously. I’m there. so I would say those are the top three places. And if anyone plays Mahjong,

I’m looking for people to play Mahjong with. You okay, we gotta do this. Okay, I have a set. I have everything. We just need two more people.

Allea Grummert (46:50)
I did learn during my trip to Dallas, I did l I did learn, Mahjong. I will come visit you. I will make plans after this.

Alyssa Dulin (46:59)
Okay.

Allea Grummert (47:00)
I forgot I it was only one time, but I won. Not just the practice round, I won the first real round.

Alyssa Dulin (47:04)
I’ll teach you anything you need. That’s crazy, Allie.

Allea Grummert (47:08)
I know. I have a really good case of beginner’s luck. Like I’m the person who plays phase ten and just like races through the first five phases and then I sit there.

The rest of the game and watch everyone pass me. That means I end up losing phase 10 every I’m like I’m

Alyssa Dulin (47:17)
Wow. Okay, and I’m scared to play with you now, but it’ll still be so fun. okay, okay.

Allea Grummert (47:24)
like a a lifetime moratorium. I’m not interested in playing phase 10 anymore. It hurt my feelings. So

Alyssa Dulin (47:27)
okay. Okay.

Allea Grummert (47:30)
Mahjong though, we can do. well thank you so much, guys. Go to duet.co/sendgauge. The link will be in the show notes. Or if you’re watching the YouTube video, it’ll be down below. Thank you so much, Alyssa, for joining us. We’ll talk soon.